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The horrible jumble sale thread.

Mood: not great, first night and already two toilet companion sets handed in (floor standing toilet roll holders with storage and brush). THEY STILL HAD THE TOILET ROLL ON THEM. (Which is to say nothing at all about the kind of person who thinks you can reuse a toilet brush...)

More tomorrow. (Pictures, not bog brushes... Seriously, who thinks that's even in the same universe as being alright?)

On the positive side... we used to always get items donated for jumble that we could use - pots, pans, kitchenware. And the smelly clothes could all now go at 50p per kilo - In the past they went to Oxfam, whom we discovered used them in their waste to energy boiler!

I was poking around in our Scout hall's kitchen recently and found about 10kg's of cutlery in different boxes here and there. People spot it and think, 'oh, scouts could use that', which is fine, but several people do it.

I'm pretty sure I had to post on our Facebook page about it...Capture.JPG

The thing is, I found another three or four boxes and bags of cutlery at the back of cupboards elsewhere...

Tents as well. Just because a thing is a tent, doesn't mean we need or could use it. I now hide things I think people will try to keep so our hall doesn't get cluttered up with rubbish. Even things people think they could sell for more money on Gumtree - that all goes back in too, I've fallen out with people over it. I know that a) they'll put it to one side and forget about it or b) put it to one side, stick it on Gumtree, and no one will buy it and it ends up sitting in front of stuff you need for 12 months, or you end up having to make multiple journeys to the tip.

The one positive thing that has come from being involved in jumble sales, is a very highly attuned anti-clutter instinct. As soon as someone quietly utters the words' 'oh, we could use that sometime...' or 'hmmm, that might come in handy...' IT GOES IN THE BIN.

We are incredibly lucky that our scout hall is located right on the edge of a district boundary, and that the neighbouring district operates what it calls 'the crunch' where it parks a dust cart different places round the area every week in an attempt to stop the pikeys from fly tipping. Helpfully, once a year it comes to within 200m of the scout hut, which gives me an annual opportunity to clear out all the junk that other people have accumulated over the last year thinking they were somehow doing us a favour.

Nonetheless we still have items floating around that people refuse to let me bin, even though they are completely unsuitable for us and have sat for years.

It's actually looking a wee bit empty this year - but we still have about a third of the village left to collect from. Sometimes this happens, it looks very sparse, but often those sales are the most profitable.

We're still getting things that we have no possible way of selling, last night someone plonked an old analogue CRT type TV in my hands. It's really tough to say, 'no, we don't want this', if the fellow hadn't donated some other items, I think I might have though. It's frustrating that people sometimes use us as a free uplift service. The problem there is, there is no set level of what constitutes acceptable jumble. Something that I might think is rubbish (about 80% of it), others might think is high quality merchandise.

I still hate all of it of course, that will never change. Our sun will have long ago gone supernova, and the heat death of the universe may have come upon who or what ever is left of humanity. But if they are still having jumble sales, my long dead corporeal (or possibly re-animated cybernetically enhanced) form - will still hate them.

Does it all go into another hall or something? Because if there's much more stuff, where will the punters stand?

According to my young trendy cool dude chums (okay, someone I follow on instagram) you could probably give away the CRT to a fine art student and it'll be in their graduation show, at least, judging by their Graduate Art Show Bingo card anyway. Okay, this is a niche reference.

We have in the past held the sale in our hall (and around the outside of it), but no - unfortunately, it all needs howked out again into vans and taken about 100mtrs to the community centre nearby. That happens on Friday night/Saturday morning.

It's always surprising the things people will buy, which makes it all the more difficult to be picky about what we accept. We've talked about it at length, we always decide to leave as is and just get on with it.

Other comparable sales (Christian Aid, other scout sales), can be a bit more upmarket. Christian Aid do a sale and auction, other scout groups do sales similar to ours. I think ours is always about quantity over quality and folks in the village just clearing crap out their houses. (I wish we could suggest to people we're collecting from that they also make a donation - that may sound mercenary, but unless they're donating something of genuine value, then we're still doing them the favour of taking their stuff away.

Our new volunteer (scout section) is getting right into it, he's great though... Really landed on our feet with him... He was sneezing away like crazy on Tuesday there (it's called Jasthma)... He's not new to jumble sales though, he was a scout and Explorer before in a neighbouring group, so has done them before - and theirs is similar to ours.

(Also worth noting, our garage is now full of stuff. That's a garage a 17 seat minibus will go into easily. Probably worth a photo, it's packed to the roof.)

JUmble sales are, for us, a steady source of income. We avoid clutter by asking the vilage in which we operate to bring their jumble to us on the day. We offer a limited colection service on the morning of the sale. We reject most furniture or large electrical items. In our selling team we have an "antiques expert" who sorts the more valuable items from the rest and either gives us a donation or takes it to auction and sells it for us. We store nothing. At the end of the sale we offer £1 per bag of clothing - although latterly, we have discovered a business which gives us 50p per kilo for the material. The vast majority of the bric-a-brac is taken by a couple of other helpers to a local cancer research shop and another charity shop. At the end of the day we usually end up with a car boot full of unsaleable garbage which is delivered to the local recycling centre. The one thing we have noticed is that the income from jumble sales has reduced from around £500 per session to £300 per session. Also, the amount of jumble has reduced significantly. We may have to rethink the stategy if the income continues to reduce.

I had to drop some scrap off at the tip yesterday, real scrap, rusted Land rover doors, stuff that had no use at all. In the metal skip there were two brand new, unused bikes, an unused charcoal barbecue and a barnd new three burner camp stove - the burners had never been lit. Could I take them away for navs? No, they went in the skip so they were waste.

Mayhap it is time to have a Jumble sale... but I have nowhere to store stuff in the run up to the event.

Mayhap it is time to have a Jumble sale... but I have nowhere to store stuff in the run up to the event.

Do what we do. Get jumble delivered by the public on the morning of the sale. It has worked well for us over the past few years. The only downside is that the donors seem to leave their brains behind. They deliver items before we open up but, rather than making a tidy pile in our frontage they stack the stuff in front of the door!! How they expect us to get in is obviuosly not their problem.

Problem is, our jumble sale is big. It takes at minimum two nights to collect from the village, usually we're out four nights. We're actually a bit short on vans and trailers this year with only two going out and about, there will probably be more tonight. Our jumble sale often brings in £4k+, so it's a lot of stuff, people dropping it off just wouldn't work for us, (although many do, and yup, block the door...)

We recycle as much as we can at the end, books go to BHF, clothes go to the rag merchant for what ever they're offering on the day. Bric-a-brac sometimes gets picked up by one charity shop or another. To be fair, we don't get a lot of furniture these days... That usually goes to the tip, because it's often really horrible anyway, (we mostly say no to any soft furnishings now - sofas etc never sell.)

At the end of our sale, we usually have between 3 and 6 large van loads of crap going to the tip. We hire a box van with a tail lift, I think that did two journeys to the tip. The trailer we use (big gardening thing with 5ft high metal mesh sides went maybe twice? They let us tip that in the main warehouse. Sometimes the gits at the tip make us sort the stuff into skips, if that happens, then clear up usually spills over into Sunday.

Last night we picked up a large bag filled with white fake fur gillets. There must have been 20+ in the bag... No idea about the why or what of that...

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Bushfella

I had to drop some scrap off at the tip yesterday, real scrap, rusted Land rover doors, stuff that had no use at all. In the metal skip there were two brand new, unused bikes, an unused charcoal barbecue and a barnd new three burner camp stove - the burners had never been lit. Could I take them away for navs? No, they went in the skip so they were waste.

Mayhap it is time to have a Jumble sale... but I have nowhere to store stuff in the run up to the event.

Don't move. Freeze.

Take a deep breath and step away from the fundraising idea.

If you're not already doing them, the best advice I can offer, is to not start.

We occasionally get donations of items coming in like burners, tents etc outside of jumble sales... Not sure how best to make it known you'd take that sort of thing, it'll depend on the community you scout (or nav) in.

At the end of our sale, we usually have between 3 and 6 large van loads of crap going to the tip. We hire a box van with a tail lift, I think that did two journeys to the tip. The trailer we use (big gardening thing with 5ft high metal mesh sides went maybe twice? They let us tip that in the main warehouse. Sometimes the gits at the tip make us sort the stuff into skips, if that happens, then clear up usually spills over into Sunday.

Man, you think your tip guys are gits? You want to live round here. Anything over 7' high probably isn't getting in the tip, or they'd have to tut and open the height barrier, only registered vans and pickups of locals, no DIY rubbish, it's all got to go in the correct skips (okay, recycling, fair enough), "naaa mate, you'll have to take that to Witley*" is a common answer to any question.

* Another county tip about 10 miles away. So yes, you can recycle it, only after a 20 miles round trip.

Originally Posted by pa_broon74

Last night we picked up a large bag filled with white fake fur gillets. There must have been 20+ in the bag... No idea about the why or what of that...

There's a wide game in that I'm sure. Maybe you could have an actual wolfpack

The Following User Says Thank You to ianw For This Useful Post:

Man, you think your tip guys are gits? You want to live round here. Anything over 7' high probably isn't getting in the tip, or they'd have to tut and open the height barrier, only registered vans and pickups of locals, no DIY rubbish, it's all got to go in the correct skips (okay, recycling, fair enough), "naaa mate, you'll have to take that to Witley*" is a common answer to any question.

Hah!

Only a total fool would attempt to go to any local recycling centre in a van. I don't even bother trying in my minibus, the suspicious looks you get... It's almost as if your trying to dump actual dead bodies, of people you've murdered...

We used to hire a school hall for it and set up Friday night for a saturday sale. During the Friday evening there would be a steady stream of professional bargain hunters who would try and make there way in to sniff around the bric-a-brac looking for the valuable antique to try and grab for 50p. We used to have to chace them out!

Similarly when I was a venture scout we had a regular gig organising the car parking for a car boot sale. We used to get the bargain hunters turning up, pretending to have a car boot of stuff to sell, just as a way of getting in a couple of hours early to try and find the valuable bargains.